Investigating the F-35: Sound of the jet

Part 2 of a 5-part series

City Commissioner Kay Hamilton lives in in the shadow of the F-35 testing grounds in Florida.

"It rattled my house enough that a marble tile fell off of my fireplace," said Hamilton.

Robert Webb lives in the same town. Both think the F-35 is plenty loud.

"It has the largest engine ever put in a fighter aircraft," said Webb.

He runs a sound and multimedia company now, but he used to work as an engineer at Eglin Air Force Base where the planes are being tested.

He's not against the F-35 itself, but isn't a big fan of the noise it makes.

When the new plane made it's first appearance in Florida, he tells us he broke out some of his sound equipment and headed out to the runway at the base.

His peak reading was 105 decibels.

"It's going to be considerably louder than the F-16's," said Webb.

Webb was still recording when an F-16 similar to what the Vermont Air National Guard flies landed moments after the F-35.

That F-16 topped out at 97 decibels. Webb says that 8-decibel difference means a lot to the human ear.

"Twice as loud," he said.

We also wanted to get a sense of how loud the plane is, so we rented a sound meter.

Admittedly, this is not a scientific test. There are many variables, and this reporter is no scientist.

We measured takeoffs, which are louder than landings because the plane uses so much power to get airborne.

Here are the numbers from our test when we were by the runway in Florida as a pair of F-35s took off, one after the other: 109 dB for the first, and 104 dB for the second.

Again, our test is not scientific and there certainly aren't many homes sitting on top of a military runway.

Webb claims that overall, according to his measurements in Florida, the F-35 is a louder plane.

The military acknowledges the plane has a lot of power, and they are trying to figure out how and when to use that power.

"A certain type of takeoff will make it more tolerable on this particular point on the ground. And a certain type of profile will make it more tolerable," said Col. Arthur Tomassetti, a pilot helping in the development and testing of the F-35. "I mean within the constraints of being safe, I think you'll find that we will operate the airplane to be the best neighbors as we can be, but we need some time to figure out what that is as well."

In the next part of this series, in an unscientific test, we compare the sound level of an F-35 taking off with that of an F-16.

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